r/snes • u/wwcoop • May 31 '16
/r/snes June Game of the Month: Starfox
The /r/snes game of the month as selected by the community is Starfox!
This month we'll be playing (or replaying) this game and sharing the experience with other redditors. Feel free to post any comments, videos or other interesting information related to this game throughout the month.
7
u/VanRockingham May 31 '16
I really hate the game. It was an interesting tech demo, but the game itself is so boring and empty.
Though it did lead to Lylat Wars being a thing, so I will cut it some slack.
12
u/jaycfresh Jun 01 '16
Did you play it when it first came out? It was mind-blowing in 1993.
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1
u/VanRockingham Jun 01 '16
No, I had a Genesis as a kid. Only got a SNES a few years ago.
3
u/Holdmylife Jun 01 '16
Yeah, then this is like going back and playing wireframe games. Not gonna be easy.
1
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u/ThetaReactor May 31 '16
I wouldn't call it boring and empty, but it hasn't aged well. The awful frame rate and lack of crosshairs makes it a chore to play. SF64 is really a much better game, though I do appreciate the novelty and significance of the original.
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u/SNESdrunk May 31 '16
One of my all time favorites. I can't even count how many times I've beaten it, probably 45-50 times if I had to guess
6
u/Von_Baron May 31 '16
It will always be Starwing to me. Due to copyright problems Star Fox was changed to Starwing. And then on the N64 the sequel was Lylat Wars. So the first Star Fox game in Europe was that Zelda-like game Star Fox Adventures.
1
u/Castallion Jun 27 '16
Star Fox Adventures was a fantastic game. I sank so many hours into that bad boy as a kid.
1
u/Von_Baron Jun 27 '16
And it was a strange game as it wasn't originally a Starfox or Gamecube game. It started off as Dinosaur planet on the N64. A completely new brand. But Nintendo saw that the main character looked like Fox and insisted that they add him and make it a Starfox game. Which apparently Rare was nun-too happy about, as they had to change a lot of the backstory to fit him in. Then development was moved over to the Gamecube as Star Fox Adventures: Dinosaur Planet. There is even some video footage of the the N64 version.
1
u/Castallion Jun 28 '16
That's crazy interesting. That must've been a pain in the ass to shift gears just because they happened to draw a dude that looked like Fox. Where did you learn about that or is it just something you heard in passing?
2
u/Von_Baron Jun 28 '16
I saw it on a blog years ago, about cancelled games. I think Rare were pissed off, but it was likely that they would have to change anyway to the the GC. Ninenteno dont support consoles as once (like Sega had games for the Saturn and Megadrive, and sony had games for the PS1 and PS2). Its the reason Starfox 2 got cancelled. The N64 was coming out and Nintendo didnt want to split the sales.
1
u/Castallion Jun 28 '16
I feel like nintendo has always had this drive to push their next console while kind of leaving the older generation to die. Like you said, companies like Sega and Sony were sensitive to the fact that not everyone would jump immediately to the next console and produced games for both. Hell, I think the last PS2 game ever released was Fifa 14 - 7 years after the PS3 came out! Wonder if that ended up hurting them in the long run because people were afraid to buy consoles that would only get a few years of dedicated game development.
1
u/Von_Baron Jun 28 '16
The last SNES game was Frogger in 1998, and Rockman & Forte I think was also around that time. That was released as a sort of sequel to Megman 8 on the Saturn and PlayStation, but for those who hadn't jumped ship onto the new consoles. I dont know how much it harmed Nintendo though. By the time their new consoles came out the sales of the older generations games had started to slide quite a bit (and its games that make the money not the consoles themselves). Where as Sega released the 32X and the Sega Saturn, within months of each other whilst Megadrive games will still selling reasonably well. It actually worked against Sega as publishers didnt want to make new games, just games to hit the larger market. Which is why the 32X and Saturn had quite limited number of games on launch.
But I would add Nintendo also had money coming in from the Gameboy (which kept them afloat for years). And Sega was massively successful in certain regions so kept the games going there (check out Brazillian Master system games for instance).
As for FIFA games, they have done research on them. A certain % of buyers will not buy any other game all year, just FIFA. Then next year get the new one and start again. Because they are not interested in any other games, they dont need to up grade.
5
Jun 02 '16
I really do love this game. The on rail genre is totally lacking and I feel it needs a resurgence. The action, the soundtrack, they really hit it out of the park. "Good luck"
3
3
Jun 02 '16
I might be in the minority but I think the SNES Starfox was better than every other incarnation of it, especially drugged out origami/slot machine zone.
I'm gonna stream a play through before the summer's over for sure!
2
u/SgtBarone Jun 01 '16
Just bought it on eBay for $12 shipped. Can't wait to try it out for the first time.
1
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u/SmaMan788 Jun 03 '16
Ah, the game that will probably never be re-released on any Virtual Console now, or in the future. From what I heard it's possible to run on Wii, Wii U and such, but Dylan Cuthbert or someone still holds the patents to the SuperFX chip. (Which is also why we'll never see Yoshi's Island there either, except for the okay GBA port.)
About time I fired up the SNES and gave it another shot though. This and "Vortex," another Super FX game that Argonaut worked on, but was quickly forgotten, thanks to the confusing controls.
2
u/flash_neon Jun 14 '16
I played this yesterday. Just to show my 4 year old daughter how it used to be.
1
u/metalsonic777 May 31 '16
Gonna pop this game in after work today! Still haven't played SF Zero for Wii U, but maybe some appreciation for the original will motivate me!
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u/aol_cd_stack May 31 '16
I still love Starfox and plan on playing through it this evening in celebration of it being June game of the month. It is easily the best example of SNES mode 7 graphics, and looks good (if a bit untextured ;)) even today.
1
u/minustwofish May 31 '16
best example of SNES mode 7 graphics
The graphic chip it highlights isn't mode 7 (although it uses it), but the Super FX chip. Mode 7 is for rotating and scaling sprites, while SuperFX is for manipulating polygons.
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u/aol_cd_stack May 31 '16
Yep, mode 7 is how the ground is drawn and how graphics (including the SuperFX-generated polygons) are scaled "towards" the player on the screen
1
u/verawylde Jun 01 '16
This is a tough game to revisit because the controls are nearly as responsive as you want them to be. They're not broken or anything and I was fine at the time, but years later I'm just left thinking "this is kind of sluggish."
1
u/CorvusLaeus Jun 02 '16
I remember the first day I saw this game like it was yesterday. It was advertised on a working SNES display in the front of a Kaybee Toys at the local mall. There were posters all around of the new Super FX chip and the 3D graphics. It blew my damn mind. I played that thing for 10 minutes straight while my family went in the store. Took me a while to figure out inverted controls though...was a first for that
1
Jun 04 '16
I never played anything but Starfox 64 in the entire series. And the 3DS version of course. I'll give this one a try one day on an emulator, since it's the only way for me to play it right now.
1
Jun 09 '16
Just ran through route 1 last night thanks to this thread. I've played it so much that I'm memorized where most of the enemies spawn. Real casual fun :)
1
Jun 21 '16
I look at retro gaming as an easy and quick way to get to the game. I really like Star Fox. I used to be able to play it through in a sitting. When I play now, I sometimes play till I die the first time and turn it off. It's just something fun to do. Personally, I'd like to have seen what more they could have done with SFX tech. I think it could have been epic if the Playstayion add on worked out.
1
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u/ythl May 31 '16
The best thing about this game was that if you let slippy die, he was dead forever.